| ▲ | Incipient 5 days ago |
| I'd disagree with that. The prospect of a natural diamond is that it's unique (I mean, not visibly I suppose) and millions of years old. I'd say it's like AI music or art - something made by a machine, for some reason, just doesn't have any "soul" to it. I'm not actually entirely convinced in my argument, but there is something there... |
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| ▲ | rollcat 5 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| > I'd say it's like AI music or art - something made by a machine, for some reason, just doesn't have any "soul" to it. Diamonds are a product of natural geological processes. (Or, are grown in a lab, by recreating similar conditions.) Music and art are products of human talent, skill, and labor - that ML companies have used (without a license, permission, or even credit) to build datasets that are now being used to make money, at the expense of these artists. These are not the same things. |
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| ▲ | pyman 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Agree, though I think he meant one is real and the other's fake. | | |
| ▲ | rollcat 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I don't think "real" vs "fake" or "soulless" is what matters at all. Both issues should be discussed in terms of ethics and incentive structures. Who's profiting at whose expense. |
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| ▲ | CommieBobDole 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Every piece of gravel is unique and millions of years old, too. |
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| ▲ | spwa4 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Indeed. The oldest things on earth are the hydrogen atoms. Literally all of them were formed in the first 3 minutes after the big bang. So all of them have the same age, billions of years old, down to a few seconds difference at most. | | |
| ▲ | rimunroe 5 days ago | parent [-] | | > The oldest things on earth are the hydrogen atoms. Literally all of them were formed in the first 3 minutes after the big bang. Stable hydrogen wasn't able to form until several hundreds of thousands of years after the Big Bang when the universe cooled sufficiently for electrons to bind to protons. Even assuming you're counting lone protons as hydrogen atoms, it's still absolutely false. I don't know if that's true for the majority of protons in the universe, but there are mechanisms by which new protons are made all the time. Neutrons can turn into protons through beta decay, and high energy particle interactions like those involving cosmic rays can produce brand new protons. These processes can and do happen terrestrially. | | |
| ▲ | spwa4 5 days ago | parent [-] | | > These processes can and do happen terrestrially. ... and at rates that mean that the amount of non-big-bang hydrogen is not even a trillionth of a trillionth of the total. | | |
| ▲ | rimunroe 5 days ago | parent [-] | | > the amount of non-big-bang hydrogen is not even a trillionth of a trillionth of the total. I didn't say it was a huge fraction of the total. You said "literally all of them" were from the Big Bang, which is just wrong. Plenty of other processes produce protons/hydrogen |
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| ▲ | nwienert 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | But not rare. | | |
| ▲ | cogman10 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Diamonds aren't rare. Natural diamonds are artificially constrained to raise the price. | | |
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| ▲ | jqpabc123 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If you can't tell the difference by either looking or listening, I'd argue they both have a similar amount of "soul". And thus, any distinction between them exists mainly in your head. |
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| ▲ | lightedman 5 days ago | parent [-] | | The difference is instantly apparent under UV - most lab grown diamonds will not fluoresce unless they have a bad growth process that leaves flux and other impurities in the crystal. Natural diamonds won't always fluoresce but the ones that do will do so in a variety of colors, and sometimes change depending on what wavelength is irradiating them. | | |
| ▲ | ridgeguy 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Lab-grown diamonds can be tailored to exhibit the same impurities internal stresses, etc. that cause a minority of natural diamonds to fluoresce. This has not been a goal to date for synthetics because the highest price point is for diamonds that are most pure with least internal strain. If the economics of fluorescent diamonds suddenly become more attractive, I guarantee fluorescent synthetics will be on the market immediately thereafter, and will be indistinguishable from naturals without $100K worth of characterization tools. | |
| ▲ | jqpabc123 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Upside down and backwards. The difference is not instantly apparent under UV. Only about 30% of natural diamonds have fluorescence --- which is *caused* by impurities and imperfections in the material. Manmade diamonds tend to lack this because they have fewer impurities and imperfections. Equating increased perfection and purity with inferiority is highly debatable and smacks of marketing BS. | | |
| ▲ | 9dev 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Reminds me of the "vinyl is superior for its warmer sound" discussion, with a similar argument… |
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| ▲ | asadotzler 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I wanna only drink natural creek water with its natural biology and other "flaws" because, well, its natural and has a truly unique mix of critters and metals in it. Why would I want the same purified drinking water everyone else has. Natural creek water, unique and special, if unique and special were spelled g.i.a.r.d.i.a. |
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| ▲ | lovich 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I get your point, but on the other hand you don’t want to drink osmosis purified 100% h2o, or it’ll start leeching minerals from your bones. | | |
| ▲ | cantor_S_drug 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Artifically minerals can be added. Urea disproved "vital force" theory. You are doing something similar. | | |
| ▲ | lovich 3 days ago | parent [-] | | If you’re adding artificial minerals then it is no longer 100% a pure material |
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| ▲ | whatevaa 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There is no "soul" in either pieces of rock. |
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| ▲ | yen223 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Tired: rocks don't have souls Wired: we will put a soul in this rock for $10,000 | | |
| ▲ | cantor_S_drug 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Spintronics: Could diamonds be a computer's best friend? For the first time, physicists have demonstrated that information can flow through a diamond wire. In the experiment, electrons did not flow through diamond as they do in traditional electronics; rather, they stayed in place and passed along a magnetic effect called "spin" to each other down the wire -- like a row of sports spectators doing "the wave." Spin could one day be used to transmit data in computer circuits -- and this new experiment revealed that diamond transmits spin better than most metals in which researchers have previously observed the effect. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140323151718.h... |
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| ▲ | gooseus 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| https://ia801604.us.archive.org/27/items/everything-is-bulls... > We exchange diamond rings as part of the engagement process because the
diamond company De Beers decided in 1938 that it would like us to. Prior to a
stunningly successful marketing campaign, Americans occasionally
exchanged engagement rings, but it wasn’t pervasive. Not only is the demand
for diamonds a marketing invention, but diamonds aren’t actually that rare.
Only by carefully restricting the supply has De Beers kept the price of a
diamond high. Imho, that "soul" you describe is an artifact of human sentimentality and a very successful marketing campaign by a bunch of Afrikaner colonialists. |
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| ▲ | TheOtherHobbes 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Which, coincidentally, is exactly the same soul that appears in art. Walter Benjamin called it "aura" - something a physical original has, but a reproduction doesn't. It explains why collectors pay $$$$$ for a guitar played by [famous musician], even though they can't play. There's no objective way to look at any one guitar and divine its history. Without provenance or physical customisation, any Rickenbacker or Les Paul is indistinguishable from any other of the same production run. But we believe in sympathetic magic. Objects are charged with mysterious non-physical manna through proximity to wealth and status. Owning these special objects confers that manna on us, and perhaps our fortune will increase. It's the logic of witchcraft lurking at the heart of capitalism. One of the fun things about AI is that it deconstructs this while reinforcing it. Huge collections of high status manna are now inside a machine, and available for free, or near as. Do we still believe in magic, or not? | | |
| ▲ | cantor_S_drug 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > It explains why collectors pay $$$$$ for a guitar played by [famous musician], even though they can't play. They do that so, when they get together, they have a story to tell to other famous people. If that guitar were to be replaced, nobody would be able to tell the difference. | |
| ▲ | throawaywpg 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | The aura is just our minds comprehending the context of the original. Its rarity, the complexity or simplicity of its construction, our respect for the creator, etc. |
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| ▲ | cladopa 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Actually soul is Christian concept that inherits it from greeks that applies to living humans spirits only. We can talk about "anima", in latin, the same inside "animal" or "animation" to apply it to a wider concept of living beings. We can go further in time to the greek concept "daimon", devils, allude to supernatural powers or spirits to start applying it to things. Then we could apply De Boers sociopaths concept that goes back to using the Christian concept to rocks again. The only "soul" those rocks have is the one of the millions of African people that died in wars, the women that were raped and the kids that were traumatised being forced to kill their family members so a woman can look at beautiful iridescence in her finger. Disclaimer: I have worked as a volunteer helping refugees, mostly from Congo, so I am biased a lot. |
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| ▲ | cantor_S_drug 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > here is something there... Indeed there is a diamond planet that old too. A diamond planet, "55 Cancri E", is a super-Earth exoplanet known for its high density and potential diamond composition. It is located 41 light-years away and is about twice the size of Earth and nine times its mass. The planet's extreme heat and pressure are believed to have crystallized its carbon-rich composition into diamonds. |
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| ▲ | loloquwowndueo 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The atoms in the synthetic diamond are billions of years old as well. |
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| ▲ | kstrauser 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The difference is that there's a detectable difference between AI and human made art, at least today. The only detectable difference between a correctly-made lab diamond and one clawed out of the ground by children is that the latter will have flaws. I'm sure you could engineer similar flaws into the lab version if became fashionable. |
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| ▲ | nradov 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There's no such thing as "soul". |
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| ▲ | mc32 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I agree. Kind of like factory vases vs hand thrown or glass blown vases. They’re practically the same but some people will pay lots more for certain hand made ones. |
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| ▲ | tehlike 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| No one in the target audience cared about the age or the uniqueness as much as the size and the status it supposedly signals. |
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| ▲ | dyauspitr 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There is something to a rock being millions of years old, you’re not wrong. |
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| ▲ | thrawa8387336 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| LMAO diamonds have no soul... |
